We will endeavour to give an outline of the story. In a little valley bordering upon the Delaware, and called Hawk-Hollow from a colony of hawks who time out of mind had maintained possession of a blasted tree at its _embouchure_, resided, some fifty years ago, one Gilbert, an English emigrant. He had seven sons, all of whom displayed in early life a spirit of desperate and reckless adventure, and a love of the wild life of the woods and mountains. Oran was the name of the eldest, and at the same time the most savage and intractable of the seven. The disposition thus evinced obtained for these young desperadoes the _sobriquet_ of the Hawks of Hawk-Hollow. Gilbert, the father, falls heir to a rich estate in England, and after making a vain attempt to settle in that country and educate his children as gentlemen, returns at length to the valley of Hawk-Hollow, so much more congenial to the temper and habits of his sons. A fine but fantastic manor-house is erected, and the family acquire consideration in the land. In the meantime Mr. Gilbert's first wife dying, he weds another, who bears him a daughter, Jessie. At the opening of the tale, however, a Captain Loring resides upon the estate, and in the mansion of the Gilberts, holding them as the agent or tenant of a certain Col. Falconer, who is a second edition of Falkland in Caleb Williams,--and who has managed to possess himself of the property at Hawk-Hollow, upon its confiscation on account of the tory principles and conduct of the Hawks.